The movies have not been kind to music. In fact, the seventh art often relegates scores to positions of pure subservience.

However, in a recent post, cinephile blogger Girish Shambu unpacks the integrity of musical performance captured on celluloid. By dwelling on displays of virtuosity, Shambu examines the strong documentary quality that music brings to fiction films.

Gene Krupa wows Barbara Stanwyck with his matchbox solo in "Ball of Fire"

For instance, in Howard Hawks’ Ball of Fire, legendary drummer Gene Krupa ignites the screen with a solo in miniature:

“[A]s the camera watches from a mere foot away, Krupa plays the tune again, this time on a matchbox with two matchsticks. He spins intricate syncopated rhythms, all the while, miraculously, not letting the matches catch fire until the very end, when he climaxes the performance with a little burst of flame.”

Read the full article, and many delightful meditations on the cinema, at girish.

Confluences

After collaborating on the autobiographies of some of the world’s most famous subjects, Peter Knobler turns towards home and writes about memory, music, and his mother. “When I was growing up we had spent many Sunday mornings in our Greenwich Village home listening to Mahalia Jackson, Harry Belafonte, the Weavers—records that now sat on her shelves like tablets.”